it must be shown that the general scope of the Corân is really as here stated, and also that there is no text anywhere to be found of a necessarily opposite sense. The review for this purpose must needs be exhaustive. It must take cognizance of every passage bearing indirectly or by implication on the Scriptures, as well as of those in which they are expressly mentioned.

Such is the purport of this Essay. It presents a collection of the whole evidence contained in the Corân, and from it draws the conclusion that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, as current in the age of Mahomet, were by him held to be genuine and of divine authority. The work is addressed to Mahometans, and is composed in a form suitable for translation into the Oriental languages. It was first published at Agra in 1855, and is now reprinted with such slight amendments as further study of the subject has suggested.

The texts are given both in the original Arabic and in English. They are, where necessary, explained, and their bearing on the Scriptural argument brought out; and the interpretation of the standard Commentators occasionally adduced. This process has rendered unavoidable some repetition of the arguments, and the leading points are recapitulated in the concluding Section. The reader, bearing in mind the design of the compilation, will pardon this defect.

IT is my intention, in the following pages, to bring together all passages from the Corân in which reference of any description is made to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures as extant in the time of Mahomet, in order that Mahometans may perceive that the books of the Old and New Testaments are never mentioned in the Corân otherwise than with profound veneration, and may thus have their attention drawn to their Divine origin, and the inestimable value of their teaching.

The arrangement of the passages will be, as far as possible, chronological. The verses occurring in Suras revealed at Mecca, that is before the Hegira, will form the first Section; those revealed at Medina, that is after the Hegira, the second Section. Although the general order in which the Suras of the Corân appeared one after another, is approximately known from their contents, yet considerable difference of opinion exists among learned Mahometans as to some of the details. The writer, after consulting the chronological lists of the Suras as given by Mahometan authors and others, has arranged the passages in chronological sequence, to the best of his ability. It